Change Is In the Air

Last night was just was to crazy around here to post. I spent a good amount of time refining my kitchen. After I got bagged up 6 bags (yes, 6, not 5… I missed one in the fridge…) of groceries and gave them away, I headed to Whole Foods to restock. Not cheap, but so good! I spent 2 hours looking around, reading labels, checking stuff out. So fun! I came home with stuff like:

• raw wildflower honey
• apple cider vinegar
• tons of fruit & veggies
• tilapia
• coconut oil
• sunflower seed kernels
• fresh ground peanut butter
• fresh ground almond butter

I asked the guy at the meat counter what the advantage of buffalo was over beef, as they had a bunch of it there. He went off on how much less fat is in it, it’s got a ton more iron, and so much more. Then he said, “would you like to take some home to try?” Free meat? “Sure!” I expected like a 1/4 lb. of something, just to test it. He not only let me choose the cut (I chose ground, in a panic) and gave a pound of it, for free. Nice! I cooked that up tonight. Not bad!

But, the big reason that Whole Foods is my new favorite store is for their spices. Just like you can buy flour, seeds, nuts, rice & all kinds of stuff in bulk, you can buy spices in bulk, too! And it was SO much cheaper! Even the organic spices were 1/10 of the price of the packaged ones. I bought $0.15 of celery seed & $0.19 of thyme! Love it.

Then I came home and repackaged, froze, split stuff up. Everything is all organized and I love it.

Yesterday’s food wasn’t so great. We had been invited to lunch about 2 months ago (literally), so we had to go. We had Thai food, so it wasn’t too bad. It tasted great! We got brown rice and stayed away from deep fried foods. Tried to load up on veggies. You do the best you can, you know? we both split our meals and finished them for dinner, they were so big.

My favorite meal today was breakfast. I had some Acai berry granola that I bought last week at Whole Foods & sliced a fresh peach on top of it. SO GOOD! I also made some home made salad dressing and Chris and I had that on huge salads for lunch. Boiled some eggs and added that to my salad, too. Not bad. :)

Spent on groceries: $108.04

Total spent: $275.63

Wow, doesn’t seem like it’s been 4 days already! That means no chocolate for 4 days!!! Dang! :)

Ok, real quick…

Breakfast:
Me:

Good evening! Tonight I remembered why, when given the choice, I quit cooking completely from scratch. 1 1/2 hours of prep time, 20 mins. of clean up… for 10 mins. of eating. *sigh*

I bought a scale this afternoon… nope, still not going to tell you how much we weigh! :) If you notice at the bottom of each post, I have a grocery tally going. I will add my and dear hubby’s BMI, and hopefully, weight lost. We will start tomorrow, and then check in each Sunday. (Don’t want to get to obsessive over it by going daily.)

So today’s breakfast:

• Scrambled eggs (4 total) with onions, mushrooms, garlic, basil, black pepper, sea salt & fresh spinach cooked in a pat of butter
• Spelt bread toast (me with butter & garlic, him with butter & marmite)
• Fruit (me – strawberries, him – blackberries)
• Tea w/ Stevia

Chris noticed today that we’re eating less overall, small portions, etc., but we’re not hungry (except when we wake up). I imagine that’s because of the protein increase. Anyone know for sure?

So, this was our first try at Stevia. Interesting. Sure glad I bought the vanilla flavored one, though it kinda tastes like a bit of coconut in it. I don’t mind it, but it will take some time to adjust to it. Chris isn’t a fan of it and may go more the raw honey route with his tea. He also learned, today, to take his fish oil before he eats, and not at the end. :)

Chris went back to work today, and snagged some oatmeal raisin cookies to take along. I had a few through the day, as well.

Lunch was leftovers from last night. I finished off the guacamole and salad and He finished brown rice from the other night, along with our chicken. Interesting note… brown rice microwaves faster than white rice.

I also ran to Target today (bought that scale) and grabbed some more fruit as well. Strawberries and red grapes. Yum!

For dinner I had some really thin slice beef fillets to cook up. I tried Google but couldn’t really find much to do with them. In the end I created my own thing.

First I made a brown rice stuffing. Brown rice, diced onion, zucchini, mushrooms cooked in a bit of butter, to soften the onions and such. Dumped it in a bowl, added a handful of Crazins (I know, they have sugar in them, but I need to use them up), and chopped up some almonds. Mixed it all up with some of the brown rice, along with some spices (garlic, basil, oregano… I really need to buy some more herbs).

Then I “squared off” the fillets that I had and put the rice mixture inside, and rolled it up. That’s when I realized I had no toothpicks or cooking string to keep it all together. Hmm. Well, I threw a bit of safflower oil in a skillet and stuck the beef rolls seem side down cooked them until they were done.

Threw some leftover rice mixture on the side & had steamed green beans with it. Dinner is done.

It wasn’t bad. It was a little tough as it had to cook a little longer. The rice stuffing tasted good, though, especially with the Crazins in there. And some of them opened up and dumped the rice out. Oh well. Next time I think I would tie it up and maybe bake it. I think it wouldn’t be so tough then.

Also, a few clarifications. I’m not really listing drinks. Other than morning tea, I’m going only water. I read to drink half your weight in ounces of water each day. For example, if you weight 130 lbs, you should drink 65 oz. of water each day.

I’m really thankful that we’re starting this while we’re both on Spring Break. Granted, Chris still has to work, but I’m home & he’s off school. I really hope we see enough results in a week to motivate us to continue this once we head back into the hectic life we normally have!

Chris got up and left for church/work before I even got out of bed, so he made his own breakfast:

• Tea w/sugar
• Ez 4:9 bread with butter & marmite

Yes, we made a trip to World Market yesterday, and the ingredients seems to be within our standards. I think the stuff is nasty.

I don’t remember what I ate! I know I had something, though. If I think of it, I’ll insert it here. :)

After church, I went to Whole Foods to scope out some more things to fill our pantry, namely Stevia.

1 1/2 hours later, I came out with a wealth of knowledge, more ambition, and a bit of damage to my bank account, mostly because I also bought some dietary supplements (and realized I should have those on here, too), but also I didn’t buy groceries last week, so I was out of a lot, anyway. Overall, it seemed to me that the prices there were better than at Sunflower Market, and the variety is much better.

Some note-worthy purchases were:

• Gluten-free baking flour
• Safflower oil (I hate olive oil & read this is also very good for you)
• Fresh Spelt bread
• Fresh spinach
• Tilapia (yes, more fish!)
• Stevia (vanilla flavored)

I spent the rest of the day in the kitchen.

We had sandwiches for lunch-

• Spelt bread, toasted, leaf lettuce, sliced ham, tomatoes, cucumber & cucumber spread

I had been looking for some kind of natural spread I could use on bread to avoid mayo & found this wonderful cucumber spread. Not until after I put it on my sandwich did I realize it has a sour-cream base. Hmm. Oh well.

The spelt bread was not bad, especially for a sandwich. It does have a bit of a different taste, but it’s easy to adjust to… and I’m a pretty picky eater. :)

Then I decided to make some oatmeal raisin cookies. This was going to be a test, as historically, Chris can not eat anything with oats in it. It always would give him massive heartburn, literally within minutes. We started talking and wondered if it was the oats or if it was the flour & oat combination, putting off too much gluten. So, off to the kitchen I went to experiment. I pulled out my Gluten-free baking flour and even found a recipe on their site for oatmeal cookies. Problem was, it had a ton of sugar in it (white and brown). After some research in how to substitute honey (decrease other liquids, decreasing temp, adding baking soda, etc) I tried it, and this is how the first batch looked (click to enlarge).

They were so thin and quite crisp, but very flimsy. Not good. After some tweaking, I finally got a good batch, which looked like this:

Much better! They were round and soft but firm. Very happy was I. In the end, I realized that, in all my adjustments, I had not taken into consideration baking at altitude. Duh. So, my recipe follows, but it for the Mile High city, so you may have to adjust it again. :)

Gluten Free Oatmeal Cookies

(Adapted from Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods)

Ingredients

* 1-1/2 cups Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour
* 3 cups Gluten Free Rolled Oats (though I’m not sure mine were gluten free)
* 1 cup Butter (softened)
* 7/8 cup honey
* 1 tsp Vanilla
* 1-1/4 tsp Baking Soda
* 1/2 tsp Sea Salt
* 1 tsp Cinnamon
* 1 large Egg
* 1 tsp Xanthan Gum
* 1 cup Raisins (Unsulfured)

Directions

Preheat oven to 315

Today is the first day of our 30 Day Experiment. Still trying to flesh this out, so things may get changed a bit as we go along, but this is the beginning.

I wish we had a scale so I could see if we lose any weight. For now we’ll have to judge based on clothes that don’t quite fit right. :)

Breakfast (for 2):

• Scrambled eggs – 5 eggs, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, splash of 2% milk, cooked in margarine.
• Bacon – 3 pcs. each
• Strawberries
• Tea (with sugar)

Then we went shopping & headed to the Sunflower Market down the street. It was my first time actually buying fresh fish, which also means, it would be my first time to cook it! The guys selling it were awesome in giving us ideas of what to do with it.

Came home to have lunch:

• Sandwiches – Ezekiel 4:9 bread, leaf lettuce & bacon

I know Ezekiel 4:9 bread is not gluten-free, but it is flourless, made with sprouted grains, so we thought that would be a good transition. Plus Sunflower Market didn’t really have much in the way of gluten-free breads.

Dinner was a challenge. We mad bought Basa fish, so I had to figure out what to do with it. Google to the rescue. I made Baked Basa Fillet with Vegetable Rice & Steamed Green Beans. It was pretty good. Not tons of flavor, but not fishy at all. Next time I’ll use some sea salt on it.

So far, so good.

Spent on groceries: $47.43 (Sunflower Market) & $11.99 (King Soopers)

Total spent: $59.42